Evidence‐based Management in Practice: Opening up the Decision Process,Decision‐maker and Context

Evidence‐based management (EBM) has been subject to a number of persuasive critiques in recent years. Concerns have been raised that: EBM over‐privileges rationality as a basis for decision‐making; ‘scientific’ evidence is insufficient and incomplete as a basis for management practice; understanding of how EBM actually plays out in practice is limited; and, although ideas were originally taken from evidence‐based medicine, individual‐situated expertise has been forgotten in the transfer. To address these concerns, the authors adopted an approach of ‘opening up’ the decision process, the decision‐maker and the context (Langley et al. ( 1995 ). ‘Opening up decision making: the view from the black stool’, Organization Science, 6, pp. 260–279). The empirical investigation focuses on an EBM decision process involving an operations management problem in a hospital emergency department in Australia. Based on interview and archival research, it describes how an EBM decision process was enacted by a physician manager. It identifies the role of ‘fit’ between the decision‐maker and the organizational context in enabling an evidence‐based process and develops insights for EBM theory and practice.     

A case study of failure to thrive and inter‐agency work

Social workers and medical professionals have an ambiguous relationship. Though expected to work together within the child protection regulations of the Children Act 1989, there are many tensions. In general, social workers and health visitors enjoy close working relationships, but tensions are frequently experienced as one proceeds higher up the medical hierarchy. The reasons for this may be numerous, but in practice may obstruct speedy action in detection and prevention of disease which is social in aetiology — yet all professionals have an important role. I hope to demonstrate this in the following case study, where ‘failure to thrive’ took 18 months to evidence but, without inter‐agency working, might have proved fatal to the child. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The unequal impact of Covid-19 on the lives and rights of the children of modern slavery survivors,children in exploitation and children at risk of entering exploitation

This article discusses the unequal impact of Covid-19 on the lives of the children of survivors of modern slavery, child victims of exploitation and children at risk of exploitation in the UK. It draws on research that has analysed the risks and impacts of Covid-19 on victims and survivors of modern slavery. It explores how pandemic responses may have hindered these children's rights to education, food, safety, development and participation and representation in legal processes. It suggests that the pandemic should be used as an impetus to address inequalities that existed pre-Covid-19 and those that have been exacerbated by it.     

Adaptation of a community-based participatory research model to gain community input on identifying indicators of successful parenting

Parenting models are generally based on families in stable homes, rather than in transitional situations such as in foster care, homeless shelters, and other temporary, at-risk residences. Consequently, these models do not recognize the unique challenges of families in transition. This study explored the domains of the Circumplex Model and examined its fit for transitional families using tenets from community-based participatory research. Findings suggest that in addition to the Circumplex Model's components, caregivers with children living in transition believe that managing the scrutiny of external authority systems and countering the negative influences of poverty and racism are two indicators that contribute to parenting success. Obtaining consumer-informed views of parenting not only is an important contributor to standards of practice, but also a promising avenue for future research.     

GMM with Weak Identification

This paper develops asymptotic distribution theory for GMM estimators and test statistics when some or all of the parameters are weakly identified. General results are obtained and are specialized to two important cases: linear instrumental variables regression and Euler equations estimation of the CCAPM. Numerical results for the CCAPM demonstrate that weak‐identification asymptotics explains the breakdown of conventional GMM procedures documented in previous Monte Carlo studies. Confidence sets immune to weak identification are proposed. We use these results to inform an empirical investigation of various CCAPM specifications; the substantive conclusions reached differ from those obtained using conventional methods.